ADHD and autism clinic software: UK buyer's guide for 2026

The best software for an ADHD and autism clinic in the UK depends mostly on what kind of service you run. A private clinic with several specialties usually suits a general platform, while a service whose main work is ADHD or autism assessment needs a tool built for the whole assessment pathway. This guide compares the real options (Semble and Pabau, Cliniko and WriteUpp, AI scribes such as Heidi Health and Accurx Scribe, generic EHRs such as EMIS and SystmOne, and Cerebric) and how to test them before you buy.

1. The kind of ADHD or autism service you run points to the right tool#

A neurodevelopmental assessment pathway is unusually long for outpatient care.

A pathway has six stages, and AQAS recommends two hours or more of assessment#

A single ADHD or autism referral can involve:

• triage and screening;
• parent, teacher or partner questionnaires;
• a clinical interview in several parts;
• ADOS-2 and ADI-R sessions shared between clinicians;
• a diagnostic report that runs to many pages;
• a GP letter, and months of titration follow-up.

The adult ADHD assessment quality assurance standard (AQAS), published by UKAAN clinicians in Frontiers in Psychiatry, recommends two hours or more for the diagnostic assessment alone, before any of the admin around it.

A neurodevelopmental assessment pathwayReferral inScreeningPatient & informant questionnairesself / parent / teacher / GPDiagnostic appointmentsADOS-2 and ADI-RCited draft reportPayer reporting and titrationThe six stages of an ADHD and autism assessment pathway, each a hand-off where a case can stall.

Most clinic software is built around one consultation, so answer three questions first#

That is why software choices split. Most clinic software is built around a single consultation: book it, write it up, bill it. Neurodevelopmental work is a series of steps with several hand-offs. So before comparing products, answer three questions:

1. Is assessment your main work, or one service among many?
2. How is the work funded: privately, through NHS Right to Choose, under a block contract, or some mix of the three?
3. Is your bottleneck the time spent writing notes, or the whole process from referral to signed report?

Your answers point to different kinds of tool. We describe each option below from its own public website and materials.

2. Semble and Pabau suit multi-specialty private clinics; assessment services build their own steps#

Semble: a sensible default for a mixed private clinic, not built for one specialty#

Semble is a UK clinic management platform that brings electronic records, booking, billing, video appointments, patient messages and reports into one system. It is built for any specialty rather than one in particular, with automation tools for connecting outside software and a CQC toolkit to help you get ready for inspection. It does not publish prices: subscriptions are quoted per practitioner on request, with the Heidi AI scribe, SMS and taking payments charged as extras.

Strengths: it does a lot, and it is well established. If you run a private clinic where neurodevelopmental work sits alongside dermatology or physiotherapy, one system for the whole business is a sensible default, and Semble is well established in UK private healthcare.

The trade-off: it is not built for any one specialty. Scoring patient and informant questionnaires, grouping ADOS and ADI-R sessions, drafting assessment reports and splitting reports by payer are not in its published toolkit.

Its booking works for single appointments, not pathways: it will not keep sessions in the right order, match a session to the clinicians qualified for it, or hold the room it needs. An assessment service would build those steps itself from generic forms and links to other tools, and building and maintaining them becomes your project.

There is more detail in Semble for ADHD and autism clinics, and a direct Semble vs Cerebric comparison.

Pabau: more built-in AI than most, but it drafts from one consultation#

Pabau is a UK all-in-one system in the same general group as Semble, sold to a wide range of private clinics (aesthetics, dermatology, private GP, physiotherapy and more). It brings records, booking, payments, video appointments and marketing into one system, bills UK private insurers through Healthcode, and has more built-in AI than most similar tools, with a scribe, a prescribing safety-check agent and a letter writer.

Only single-user plans have public prices, at about £49 per month for a solo practitioner. Anything larger is quoted on request, and AI, SMS, video appointments and card terminals are billed as credits (£0.10 each) on top of the subscription.

Strengths: it does a lot, with AI built in. For a private clinic with several specialties that wants one system with AI drafting and private-insurance billing, Pabau is a reasonable choice.

The trade-off is the same as Semble's. It is not built for any one specialty, so an assessment service would build those steps itself. Its AI drafts from one consultation, without pulling in other sources or linking each claim to its evidence.

3. Cliniko and WriteUpp are low-cost basics for small allied health and therapy practices#

Cliniko: from $45 a month, with no AI of its own and no NHS evidence#

Cliniko is an Australian practice-management system that has been running since 2011, which makes it one of the older tools in this group. It is aimed at allied health and therapy-led practices, and it covers the basics well (diary, online booking, intake forms, treatment notes, video appointments, invoicing and card payments), with payment matching done through a link to Xero.

UK accounts have their data stored in the UK, and pricing is simple and low. It is billed in US dollars per clinic by number of practitioners, from $45 a month for one practitioner and $95 for two to five, with every feature included and no contract.

Strengths: it is low-cost, and it is simple. That suits a small allied health or therapy-led practice that needs only booking, notes and billing in one place. It has fewer features than Semble.

The trade-offs are the same as Semble's, plus two of its own.

• Not built for one specialty. As with Semble, the assessment steps aren't in the toolkit.
• No AI of its own. Note drafting comes from other companies' scribes that connect to it (Heidi and similar), which share the single-session limit described for Pabau.
• No NHS evidence. UK data storage and GDPR are covered, but none of the NHS evidence needed for NHS-funded work (see the compliance checks below). The ISO 27001 and PCI DSS badges on its security page belong to AWS and Stripe, its hosting and payment suppliers, not to Cliniko itself.

WriteUpp: from £19.95 per user a month, but the scribe add-on more than doubles it#

WriteUpp is a UK-built practice-management tool for therapists, counsellors and allied health, in the same simple, low-cost group as Cliniko. It covers the diary, clinical notes, online booking, invoicing and video appointments, with UK data hosting, ISO 27001 certification and UK-based support. Prices start at £19.95 per user per month on the pay-as-you-go Flex plan, £27.95 for Solo or £45.95 for a two-clinician Group account (further users £12 to £15 each). It has recently added an AI medical scribe, sold as an add-on at £23.95 per user per month.

Strengths: low price, simple, and hosted in the UK. At £20 to £28 a head it sits at the budget end of the market as an entry-level tool. A solo therapist or small practice gets the basics without paying for features they would not use. Check the price with the scribe added, though: at £23.95 per user it more than doubles the cost of a Flex seat.

The trade-offs match Cliniko's.

• It is not built for one specialty, so the assessment steps are outside it.
• Its booking is a diary, so it does not keep a series of assessment sessions in order.
• Its scribe drafts a consultation note, not an assessment report with a source for every claim.

4. AI scribes: Heidi Health and Accurx Scribe are built for consultation notes#

An AI scribe listens to a consultation and drafts the clinical note. Heidi Health transcribes appointments and writes notes from templates. Accurx Scribe, powered by Tandem Health, is rolling out across the Accurx platform. Accurx reports note-writing time falling from about seven minutes to just over one per appointment and states that Scribe meets NHS England's requirements for AI scribe technology.

A scribe is a sensible first step if note-writing is your only problem#

Scribes are built for the GP-style consultation: a short appointment that needs a quick, accurate summary note, repeated dozens of times a day. Accurx's seven-minutes-to-one figure comes from that setting. For a single clinician whose only problem is writing notes, a scribe is a sensible first step and quick to start using.

Scribes have two limits for assessment: consultation-length summaries and no source links#

Scribes have two limits for neurodevelopmental assessment.

• Scribe summaries are too short for an assessment report. After an interview of two hours or more, the result is a report of many pages that pulls together the interview, informant questionnaires, school records and developmental history, written in neuro-affirming language for the patient and family. Scribe summaries are written at consultation length, so you end up rewriting rather than editing.
• Without sources, the draft takes longer to check. A scribe does not link each statement to its source, so much of the time it saves on typing goes on checking every claim against the transcript, questionnaires and records before you can sign. A platform that links each sentence to its evidence lets you check it where it sits.

Most scribes will accept an uploaded document, but patient and informant questionnaires, booking, structured reports and reporting to the NHS are not what scribes do, and neither product claims they are. We go into this in AI scribes vs assessment platforms, and into what the reporting style needs in neuro-affirming ADHD and autism reports.

5. Generic EHRs and spreadsheets work at low volume, but admin grows with referrals#

Plenty of UK assessment services run on a generic EHR plus spreadsheets, email and shared drives. It is cheap and familiar, and it works when numbers are low. If you assess a handful of patients a month, well-kept spreadsheets may be the right answer this year.

EMIS Web and SystmOne are built around the GP consultation, not an assessment pathway#

The best-known UK EHRs are the NHS primary-care systems: EMIS Web (from EMIS Health, now part of Optum) and SystmOne (from TPP), which between them are used by more than 90% of English GP practices. They are built around the GP consultation and the NHS primary-care contract, not an assessment pathway: nothing in them is designed for informant questionnaires, organising ADOS/ADI-R sessions or a diagnostic report with sources.

Their private versions (such as EMIS Web Clinical Services) also come with NHS licensing and network hurdles that make them an awkward fit for an independent assessment clinic. So most private services end up on a lighter records tool plus spreadsheets, not on EMIS itself.

As referrals grow, questionnaires, report versions and payer reporting stay manual#

Whatever the base system, the problems arrive as you grow. Chasing and scoring questionnaires, tracking report versions and payer reporting are all done by hand over email, so admin staff numbers grow with referrals. Audit evidence (who saw what, when, and why) is spread across systems, which slows getting ready for CQC and clinical governance.

6. Cerebric is built to run UK ADHD and autism assessment services end to end#

Cerebric is a specialist platform built for one job: running UK ADHD and autism assessment services end to end. It covers:

• Intake and screening: patients sign themselves up and are screened against the clinic's own criteria, and cases are passed to clinicians to review.
• Patient and informant questionnaires: patient self-report forms plus parent, teacher and GP questionnaires are sent, chased and scored automatically when they come back, with the results saved to the record rather than copied in by hand.
• Messaging: secure messages with patients and families in the portal, so they sit on the record instead of in a clinician's inbox.
• Scheduling: built for the assessment pathway. It keeps sessions in the right order, matches each one to clinicians who are qualified and actually free, organises ADOS-2 and ADI-R sessions that need several clinicians, books rooms, and handles patient self-booking, automatic video links and keeping track of DNAs.
• Payments and payers: private self-pay, NHS Right to Choose and NHS block contracts run side by side in one service, with billing and payment matching across several payment providers and accounting tools.
• Reports: assessments are recorded and transcribed, and AI drafts the report from templates the clinic sets up. Every sentence links back to its source (a transcript timestamp, questionnaire answer or document), and the clinician checks it before signing off.
• Payer reporting: figures split by payer type (private, Right to Choose, block contract), with CSV export for NHS returns.

On compliance, Cerebric is registered as a UKCA Class I medical device, holds NHS DSPT (Standards Exceeded) and DTAC, and runs a DCB0129 clinical safety process.

Clinics using Cerebric recorded 58% more assessments per clinician#

Clinics using Cerebric recorded 58% more assessments per clinician, and report writing time fell by 75%. Measured at UK Right to Choose and private neurodevelopmental providers using Cerebric, 2025–26.

Some leaders expect clinicians to resist it. "My biggest fear was clinicians hating it. It was the complete opposite: the moment they realised its value, they became advocates. They're emailing me asking when we're going to deploy it," as the Clinical Lead of one Right to Choose provider put it.

Cerebric is the wrong choice for GP practices, multi-specialty clinics or dictation alone#

Cerebric suits UK assessment services of any size, including smaller clinics that plan to grow, and private-only, NHS-only and mixed services all run on it. It is the wrong choice for a GP practice, a clinic with many specialties, or a single clinician who only wants dictation. Nothing in it is limited to ADHD and autism, so services that also do wider mental health work can still use it.

It works on its own or alongside an existing EHR through a Chrome extension, so you do not have to move your records across.

7. Which clinic software to choose depends on whether assessment is your main work#

Questionnaires, ordered booking and sourced reports are where the tools differ most#

The table below shows what each kind of tool covers across the pathway. Each cell reads Built in, Build it yourself (put together from generic forms and links to other tools), Manual (done by hand), or Not what it does.

Match the tool to your service type, and check when to think twice#

8. Test clinic software before you buy: one real case, then NHS compliance evidence#

Ask the vendor to take one anonymised referral to a signed report#

Run every demo against your own pathway, not the vendor's script. Pick one real (anonymised) case, say a Right to Choose adult ADHD referral, and ask the vendor to take it from referral letter to signed report and GP letter. Ask:

• Which steps are built in, which rely on other tools, and which are only planned?
• How are patient and informant questionnaires chased and scored?
• How is a DNA recorded, and how does rebooking work?
• If AI drafts anything, how does a clinician check each claim against the evidence behind it, and what happens when they disagree with it?

Ask for DTAC, DCB0129 and DSPT evidence by name, not general statements#

Then run the UK compliance checks:

• DTAC: NHS England's criteria for clinical safety, data protection, technical security, interoperability and usability. Ask for completed evidence, not a promise that it is coming.
• DCB0129: the clinical risk standard for companies that make health IT. Ask for the clinical safety case, hazard log and named Clinical Safety Officer.
• DSPT: the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit self-assessment. Look the vendor up on the public register, not the badge on its website.
• Security: Cyber Essentials Plus, independent penetration testing (outside experts trying to break in) and how it handles GDPR. If the product drafts clinical content, ask whether it is registered with the MHRA as a UKCA medical device, and in what class.

Our clinic buyer's guide to DSPT, DTAC and DCB0129 explains what each one covers. Ask for those documents by name: a general statement such as "we follow NHS guidelines" is not evidence.

None of Semble, Pabau, Cliniko or WriteUpp publishes a DCB0129 clinical safety case#

The answers differ a lot between kinds of tool. Of the practice-management platforms, Semble is ISO 27001 certified and Pabau lists Cyber Essentials, but none of Semble, Pabau, Cliniko or WriteUpp publishes a DCB0129 clinical safety case, a completed DTAC or a DSPT entry. Heidi and Accurx Scribe both publish DCB0129 safety documents with named Clinical Safety Officers, DTAC evidence and DSPT entries, and both are MHRA-registered as Class I devices. Cerebric publishes the same set.

This matters for any NHS-funded work, whether Right to Choose or a block contract: the clinic using the software cannot complete its own DCB0160 assessment without the supplier's safety case.

9. Before you sign, demo your own pathway, check compliance and agree exit terms#

The right choice depends on what kind of service you run, as the table above sets out. Whatever you shortlist, demo it against your own pathway, ask for DTAC, DCB0129 and DSPT evidence, and agree the exit terms before you sign. Our guide to switching clinic software without losing records covers the exit terms.